What teachers really want to tell parents.

[SWTXBelle]

Teacher - adult
student - child

Teachers can be wrong, but the odds of you being called in for something a teacher isn't 100% sure about are pretty slim - parental meetings are a major pain, requiring paperwork, dealing with the administration, not to mention the stress. 99% of teachers aren't going to go through the hassle if it isn't a serious problem, and if they don't know what they saw. You as a parent should have already talked to your child about the incident/behavior before you go into the meeting. If you were meeting with me, your child would not be at the meeting. Parents need to partner with teachers, not regard them as the enemy.

The problem isn't parents who listen to their children and come in willing to hear the teacher; the problem is the parents who will not even entertain the idea that their little snowflake could do anything wrong. The problem is parents who come in openly hostile. You think our pretty princess entitled pnms come out of nowhere? Those apples aren't falling far from the trees.

Teaching college has definite advantages to teaching middle school.

eta - I'm not only a teacher; I'm a parent. Just today I wrote my youngest son's teacher on this, the first day of school, to alert him to certain behaviors that might be a problem and to let him know how we have been working with him this summer. THAT is partnering. I know my youngest is not perfect. But I'm his first teacher, and I want to WORK with his teachers to enable him to become the young man I know he can be. I welcome their input. Last year, when my other son reported a very troublesome incident at the school, I wrote the teacher, had a meeting, and very quickly figured out, working with him, what had happened and how my son had misinterpreted what had been said. The teachers know I regard them as allies. They know I'm not going to go off half-cocked based on something an 8 year old thinks he might have heard.